One of Berkeley's arguments on compensating errors in the calculus

DOI10.1016/J.HM.2010.07.001MaRDI QIDQ716158zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Kirsti Andersen

Publication date 19 April 2011

Published in Historia Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hm.2010.07.001

zbMATH Keywords

calculus G. W. Leibniz George Berkeley Lazare Carnot

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 18th century (01A50)

Review text

Berkeley, known in mathematics as a critic of the foundations of the calculus of Leibniz and Newton, argued in \textit{The Analyst} (1734) that a reason the calculus produced true results was that two errors cancelled each other out. Though Berkeley's claim is well-known in the historical literature, the author provides a more detailed mathematical analysis of his reasoning than has occurred before. The analysis also reveals how Berkeley was unclear in his own writing as to whether he regarded Leibniz's differentials as infinitesimals or finite quantities. Lazare Carnot offered his own ``compensating errors critique, presented later in the eighteenth century, and it is argued here that his work is essentially different from that of Berkeley and not a continuation.

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